


shared paths unraveling

by tozier



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, God Killing Squad, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s04e13 No Better To Be Safe Than Sorry, Post-Season/Series 04, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, in which the author pretends there's no such thing as a press release
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2020-05-07 11:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19208305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tozier/pseuds/tozier
Summary: Quentin feels like he’s in mourning, in his own widower’s blacks somewhere deep underground. It hurts with every fibre in his being, but he musters up whatever inadequate bravery he still had inside him that didn't get left with the people he loves, and looks up at the screen.And then Eliot adjusts his grip on the peach, staring into the fire with an identical flame in his eyes. “No,” he says instead, “fuck this.”Quentin drops the mug, Eliot takes a bite of the peach, and the earth shakes beneath their feet.or, Julia and Eliot refuse to let this be the end.





	1. PROLOGUE: Persephone, Our Lady Underground

**Author's Note:**

> sup motherfuckers. i watched all four seasons of the magicians in 12 days, went into it knowing how s4 ended, and STILL fucked up and got attached to q. this is my vain attempt to stop fucking THINKING ABOUT IT. if you don’t think julia wicker and eliot waugh wouldn’t turn the world inside out to get quentin back, i’d just like to have a conversation about the term “out of character”.
> 
> this story deals with grief, loss, the reality of depression, canon-typical discussions about mental illness & sexual assault, and all the ugliness and anger that comes with. a lot of this i literally wrote in the hospital to cope with my own experience with both of those, so if parts of this sound really raw, that's why. usually i’m all for unhappy endings so long as they have meaning; life is sad and painful a lot of the time, but that strife would be purposeless without a silver lining, and q’s ending did such a disservice to that concept. magic doesn't just come from pain, it comes from love, too. the light at the end of the tunnel should always be a train. hmu about it sometime sera and john. i promise i won’t be too mean.
> 
> okay, maybe that’s a lie.
> 
> in any case, please enjoy my personal vendetta to fix the magicians, aka We Own This House Now.
> 
> the lyric in the tin is from the song "idylls of the king" by the mountain goats. dedicated to my best bee jenna because she allows me to go postal every fucking day and never even attempts to reign me in.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our Lady Underground says goodbye.

The ability to stop time can be easily abused with the advent of free will. Fortunately, all men alive can’t stop time.

Unfortunately, the Old Gods have free will, too.

Usually, in Persephone’s opinion, Time Magic is used only in selfish cases—including her own. In any variations of reality she’s seen, the only way time magic _will_ be used are all selfish as well.

Luckily for her, the body her murderer is currently in possession of is someone she knows quite well by the time of her death. So, as her own throat gets cut, Persephone stops time once more. That very moment is the only time that has ever or will ever occur in which Time Magic is used for entirely unselfish purposes.

It’s quite easy to find Julia once she gets through the Monster's shadow-puppeteering. Persephone has met Julia’s Shade stripped bare in Elysium; she knows where to look. She feels her home calling out to her, begging at her heels. The House of the Shade, the Palace of Childhood. She puts aside her own longing, because she has read her own book, and she knows this will not happen if she doesn’t.

Julia, Shade tucked safely within her, is hiding beneath a kitchen table in her Happy Place, feet kicking joyfully in the air. In the dusty light of Ted Coldwater's kitchen, she looks indecipherable from her Shade. Persephone looks around, sees three model planes on one of the shelves all covered in several thick layers of dust, and knows that where Julia imagines she is no longer exists in her realm. Persephone closes her eyes, and briefly prays for the safe journey of Ted Coldwater, then makes herself small and crawls beneath the table. “Hello, Julia.”

If Julia is shocked to see her, she doesn’t show it. Only someone schooled in knowing Julia Ogden Wicker could tell that anything is awry based on her feet stilling in the air. “Hi, Persephone.”

Persephone smiles, “We’re on a first name basis now, I see.”

Julia shrugs. “I suppose.” She sounds morose. Persephone hums low and empathetic.

“Julia darling, I have something for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Julia intones monotonously, tracing a path of the map drawn beneath the table with her toe. Persephone looks up, spots Blackspire, and smiles. She prays for the safe journey of the Monster. It’s only slightly forced. Empathy for all living creatures can be hard sometimes, but it becomes so much easier with practice.

“Yes. I’m here to give my power to you.”

Julia’s feet immediately drop down to the floor, and she sits up straight, then bangs her head on the table. “Youch! Fuck.”

Persephone chuckles. “Eager, are we?”

“Not eager. Just shocked.” She raises an eyebrow, and Persephone sees a young adolescent in her now, sharp and witty and fierce. “I haven’t known you to be a particularly forthcoming God.”

“That’s true,” agrees Persephone, “but death doesn’t only do strange things to mortals.”

“Wait. Death?”

“Yes, Julia. The Monster currently possessing your body is killing me right now in your realm.”

“What?!” Julia shouts, and winces when a bat-winged monster throws itself against the picture window of the kitchen. “Fuck, sorry, hold on. Q!”

“Right here!” Quentin calls from somewhere within the house. Something supernatural screams. Persephone’s eyes flutter shut once more, and she has a much easier time now praying for the safe journey of Quentin Coldwater. “You’re lucky I remember so much about these — ach! Motherfucker, get off me! Not much time, Jane!”

“Coming!” Julia shouts back. She pulls at the edges of the tablecloth, tucking it over them as a hiding place. The din surrounding them goes quiet once more. “Sorry. You left off at _my hands are killing you.”_

“Well. Killed, past tense. Schematics.”

“Shit,” Julia says. Persephone nods with a smile. Shit, indeed. “But why would you…?”

“Give you my power?” Julia nods and shrugs simultaneously. “I think you have proven yourself able to do wonderful things with when faced with large amounts of power.”

“I… How?” Julia asks quietly, her throat moving around more words than she’s able to say.

“Ah. That’s something I think you’ll enjoy. Lou?” Suddenly, the din outside Julia’s Happy Place kicks up once again, and it takes a minute or two for Lou to lift up the tablecloth and join them.

“Yuck,” he frowns, plucking at some monstrous goo on his suit. “I just got this dry cleaned.”

“Hello. Sorry about the monsters," Julia says, brow furrowed. "Would you mind telling me who you are and how you got here? I thought...”

Lou looks up, and Persephone notes the joy in his eyes. He always did love the kinder ones, but even more, the fierce ones. Lou puts down his briefcase, puts his hand out, and ducks his head in a crude imitation of a bow. “You may call me Lou, My Lady. I’m the lawyer on retainer for God-related matters.”

“Oh,” Julia intones softly, blinking in shock. “Okay. Hi.” She shakes his hand. Lou blushes, which makes Persephone laugh.

“Oh, Lou. Always so starstruck.” She grins at him tipping her head towards him. Lou mutters unintelligibly. “Lou, time is of the essence for this one. I’m currently bleeding out on Earth.”

“Oh, of course. My apologies, My Lady.” Lou straightens up and clicks the locks on his briefcase. It shines with light, and the bats shriek again, skittering away against the eternally-yellowed linoleum. “You were saying?”

“The standard transferral contract will do nicely, thank you.” Lou nods, and pulls a piece of paper out of the light, then locks the briefcase once more. The light goes out.

“Our Lady of the Tree, if you're so inclined, signing this form would mean your consent to allowing Our Lady Underground’s power to drain into you as the life of her body goes with it. Once her power is safely transferred to you, she shall be sent to Elysium, where she’ll reside for eternity. Do you accept these terms as I have explained them to you?” A bat throws itself on top of the table and shrieks. Under the table, none of them flinch.

“Yes, I… I accept.” Julia's voice is so faint, but she says it without apprehension. Persephone smiles just as faintly. Lou nods as he readies the ritual, but it goes unseen by them both. Silver strings all the way round.

“Good," he says. "Our Lady Underground?” Persephone puts her hand out, palm facing the map above them, never breaking eye contact with Julia. “Our Lady of the Tree?” Persephone smiles encouragingly at Julia as she mirrors her. “Wonderful.” Lou grabs the ceremonial dagger. “On your word, My Lady,” he says to Julia.

She breaks eye contact to eye the dagger, and looks up at Persephone as she asks a question Persephone doesn’t remember reading in her Book, but makes her impossibly certain that this is the best Last Rites imaginable for herself: “Persephone, are you sure you want to do this?”

She nods, barely there, nearly there, “Sometimes the only way to do a whole lot of good is to do something a little bit bad.”

Julia gives her a small, selfless smile; what a beautiful last sight. “Okay. Now,” says Julia to Lou.

“As you wish, My Lady.” Julia’s blood falls to the paper beneath them from her wound, easily stitching itself back up, then Persephone's. “Our Lady Underground.” He cuts into her flesh as well. Neither of them move, don’t even flinch at the pain. Persephone smiles, even as her blood continues spilling endlessly from the wound, spillt all over the contract, staining her white dress, staining the white tablecloth, staining her vision with nothing but light.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Julia frets, attempting to preform an intricate tut in the hopes of getting it to stop. All it serves is to make her blood glow brighter. "Fuck, Persephone, I can't stop it!"

“It’s alright, Julia,” Persephone smiles, feeling herself fade. She sighs. Nearly there. “It's all alright.”

“Our Lady Underground,” Julia says from somewhere far away. Trees in her voice. “I pray for you to have the safest journey.”

And then, as quickly as she was ever here, Persephone is gone.


	2. King Quentin Makepeace Coldwater, The Moderately Socially Maladjusted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin loves, and loves, and loves.

Dying is everything and nothing like Quentin expected it’d be.

It’s greyscale, the kind of sadness you have to be born with to understand, the kind of depressing feeling you need to heavily medicate to ever dream of eradicating. He expected that; especially the bit where death feels identical to the rock bottom of depression.

What he didn’t expect is how badly he fucking _hates it._

Quentin Coldwater, King of His Own Suffering (and, similarly, Fillory), was hospitalized six times from ages 16 through 25. He tried to kill himself four times in total; the closest he ever got was in his junior year of Undergrad. Julia called 911 when she found an emptied orange bottle and two fifths drained from the bottle of whiskey she got from his dad for making the Dean’s List, and he was carted out of their shared apartment, swaying between two police officers in fucking handcuffs. The NYPD, if you ask him, can suck his dick. He woke up three times in the car, because Manhattan traffic takes ages to get through, and has potholes that reach down into the depths of hell. New York City streets can _also_ suck his dick.

He was in Bellevue for three and a half days before Julia had him transferred to somewhere significantly less State-Hospital-y upstate where he was allowed to wear clothes that weren’t made out of paper. Julia, who was on the phone with the insurance company for, according to her, seven straight hours, got him in there. He barely remembers any of it, because detox also- _also_ sucks dick. All he remembers is calling Julia and sobbing over the payphone in the hallway about how he feels even crazier at Bellevue than he did when he tried to kill himself. He said he was sorry he put her through what he did, and that he’d do anything for her to get him to a different place where he can heal in earnest without being constantly terrified.

Four Winds Psychiatric Center in Katonah, New York was on the Metro-North Line, and he stayed there for 16 days in the winter of 2014. Julia didn’t visit him, but she did send him a package with several hoodies, four pairs of sweatpants, six black t-shirts, a pack of the plastic cards he likes to shuffle, and his dogeared traveling-copies of _Fillory and Further._ His dad came to visit only once. Quentin asked him to leave after fifteen minutes because seeing him against the white-washed walls of the ward was far too jarring, felt too close to a medical hospital, far too close to how he feels whenever he's faced with the reality of anyone else dying aside from himself.

Death, the real thing, feels a lot like how he felt in the hospital: a voluntary inmate in a prison of his own design. Living, dying, dead, it all felt just the same. His skin still buzzes with dormant magic even though he's underground. His cells still sing with the lights of the mirror realm despite how the light inside him has gone out. He hates it. He fucking _hates it._ He didn't want life when he had it, and now that he's given it away, all he wants is to have it back. King Quentin Makepeace Coldwater, the Selfish.

There was hot cocoa at Four Winds, too; it was just as terrible and grey-tasting as the one Penny hands to him with a therapist's pitying eyes. He didn’t know magic existed when he was hospitalized, didn’t know he would fall in love, and fall out of love, and fall in love again; he didn’t know he’d be the father to an adventurous, scrappy boy; he didn’t yet have the privilege of experiencing the beauty of all life.

He still knows the beauty of all life, and that makes death seem even more greyscale. What he had at the Mosaic and all its colors is pitiful in comparison to the black-and-white of death.

To suicide.

COLDWATER , QUENTIN  
FLUOXETINE HCL 10MG

He finds himself ruminating in this preternaturally white-washed room about the orange of the bottle he left on Dean Fogg’s desk that he took one pill from every morning for 10 years of his life. _Magic doesn’t come from talent, it comes from pain._ Eliot once told him that. Quentin repeats it again to Penny, his Penny, now.

He never sank so low as when he thought saving their lives meant changing them.

Penny says something similar, some falsely commiserative platitude about his attributes in a voice that sounds ripped straight from the mouth of a Hollywood grief counselor, and Quentin wants to fucking cry. He doesn't want a therapist; he had enough of those above ground to know that nothing they taught him about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy ever mattered in the moments before his death. He  _ruined_ it; he loved so hard while he was alive, but wasn’t ever able to express it, and then died before he got the chance to. Killed himself instead of saying it. Chose dying over bravery.

Penny moves them in front of a screen, and it takes too long before Quentin realizes he’s watching reality. Watching Earth. Watching Eliot, monsterless and soulless in his widower’s blacks leaning heavily on Margo’s arm and a cane too ornate to be the one he used at the Mosaic. A fire. A flame. A scorched crown, nearly ash turned to ash. A deck of cards, floating above the flame, the tips of it singed. Five identically haunted, broken expressions. _His_ scorched crown; _his_ deck of cards; _h_ _is_ haunting brokenness. He wants to throw the ceramic mug at the screen. He doesn’t.

And then Eliot pulls a peach from his pocket, brings it up to his mouth to smell their life together, and Quentin has no strength left in himself to hold back; he finally starts to sob. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to stop now that he’s started. He holds his cup of cocoa tightly, tight enough so that the porcelain heat from the bonfire seeps into him, the heat from Eliot’s body that Quentin died to make sure stayed Eliot's seeps into him.

 _“No,”_ Quentin might whisper, a voice ripped from his throat that doesn’t sound like his own as Eliot adjusts his grip on the peach. “Please. Please don’t. I can’t— Don't make me watch this, Penny, I… I don’t…” He turns his head, squeezing his eyes shut tight, body wracked with sobs.

“Hey, man,” Penny says, touching his shoulder lightly, one arm wrapped around it like cellophane, “I think you’re gonna wanna see what happens next.”

Quentin feels like he’s in mourning, in his own widower’s blacks somewhere deep underground, not even embarrassed to be sobbing in front of Penny. It hurts with every fibre in his being, but he musters up whatever inadequate bravery he still had inside him that didn't get left with the people he loves, and looks up at the screen.

And then Eliot adjusts his grip on the peach, staring into the fire with an identical flame in his eyes. “No,” he says instead, “fuck this.”

Quentin drops the mug, Eliot takes a bite of the peach, and the earth shakes beneath their feet.

Quentin gasps, startled at both the sound of the mug shattering at his feet and the Underground shifting in a way it didn’t think it would. Still, he can’t look away, especially because no one on Earth seems to notice the shift in time and space. Up there on the screen like an Old Hollywood heroine is Eliot Waugh, all smoky-eyed majesty, a High King in his blood, a leader, a soothsayer, a lover, a lover, an endless, boundless lover. Quentin smiles, crooked and tragic and wonderstruck. He can’t believe the whole world isn’t in love with Eliot Waugh clutching tightly to his cane as he struggles to stand upright. Margo goes to help him, but pulls her hands away at the last second. Julia looks up at him through the cards still hovering over the bonfire. Alice looks guilty over nothing, over everything. Kady’s hands twist even tighter in her lap. Quentin loves them, and loves them, and loves them.

“Guys, what's the point of having magic if we lost the only person who ever truly loved it?" says Eliot with the kind of stalwart leadership Quentin’s always envied. Always adored. Will always adore. "He believed in it more than should be physically possible. Believed in its power, not to hurt us, but change us.  _We still have magic._ He made goddamn sure of it. We’re not gonna sit around and burn useless effigies for him because he isn't _gone._ Not yet; not unless we don't go save him. The moment he truly dies is when we've given up trying to bring him back. I’m not gonna let that happen. I _won’t._ We’re all still alive; it’s time we start acting like it.”

Silence. Endless, wonderful, wretched silence. Quentin can barely see through his watery vision, but he refuses to look away, keeps swiping blindly at his eyes with his sweatshirt sleeve.

And then, because Alice always has a question for every answer: “How do you suggest we do something like that? Bring him back from the dead? It’s not as easy as just speaking it into existence or doing a few spells. I would know, I fucking lived it. He’s _dead,_ Eliot. He’s… Fuck.” Her tone tries at snide, but the longer she speaks, the less she can manage it; she just sounds wrecked instead, devoid of all hope and life in a way Alice Quinn should never be. Quentin’s heart breaks, and breaks, and breaks.

“I've got a few ideas,” says Eliot, hollow and totally limitless, “Hades, for one. We could cut him a deal.”

“Yeah, but a bunch of mostly useless Magicians can't get a council with the _God of the Underworld.”_

“Maybe not without leverage.” Eliot’s voice is dark blue velvet, all cutthroat regality. _For what it's worth, I think you're gonna make a really good king._ Quentin still believes that. “And we’re not all mostly useless Magicians.” Eliot turns to Julia, his conspiratorial smile hazy in the firelight, between the cards Quentin’s hands never went two weeks without touching since age 8.

“I'm in,” she responds immediately, all white-hot flame and control. No longer a forest fire, but still with all her ability to set the world ablaze. Fierce enough to wake up the meek soul of Quentin Coldwater. Angry enough to turn his cowardice lionhearted. “Whatever plan you come up with, Eliot, I’m in.”

Eliot stares her down, almost puzzled that she would ever agree with a plan like that so readily. “Really?”

“Yeah. Like you said, what good is magic if we don’t use it? What good is being a God if I don’t work to make the world a better place than I entered it? Proactive methodology is more effective than passive suffering. I have Our Lady Underground’s power now, and I’m sure as hell gonna use it. Plus, I don’t wanna know what the world is like without Q. This place needs Quentin in it. Without him, there's no way to make…”

She smiles, almost serene despite the fact that she’s still crying. Quentin’s seen that smile on her before; it’s how she looks whenever she finds a purpose for living. He first saw it when she got into Columbia, then when she showed him the sparks flying from her fingers on the rooftop, and again the first time she stepped foot in Fillory. There's finally meaning again to her endless wandering. A meaning filled with suffering and unrest, but somehow, it still brings her— “Peace. Without Quentin, there's no peace.”

Eliot nods at her, smiles as she stands with him, and Quentin watches from beyond the veil as an infinitesimally thin, glowing silver thread reaches out between their hands and ties them together at the wrist. Neither of them seem to notice despite the fact that their eyes are glowing with that same holy light; Quentin isn't entirely sure it's even there. He looks to Margo, and her eyes are zeroed in on whatever Q is seeing. A fairy eye and a dead eye, both seeing living, breathing light. Margo shifts, visibly uncomfortable, then finally settles when she looks down and sees a bronze string connecting her pinky to Eliot’s. Quentin can feel Penny hovering just behind his left shoulder.

“Soulmark,” he says, pointing to the complicated sigils they’re blind to hovering just over their hearts and bound to their very essence. “Their love for you has bonded their souls in a way that can never be dissevered now. They share an understanding of one another in a way that transcends the bounds the plane they’re on.” Quentin sniffs harshly, breath wavering. He smiles, watery as he stares and stares and stares. Penny puts a hand on his shoulder. “If you didn’t think you were loved before, Coldwater, this is inarguable proof. You’ve taken two people who should’ve been strangers and rendered them soulmates.”

Quentin laughs quietly, and nods. “I’m glad they have each other. If I can’t be with… I’m, um, I’m glad they can be together.”

Penny takes a step forward, and Quentin turns to find him staring at him like he’s grown a third eye. “Are you high on fumes? _No._ It’s not _romantic,_ you idiot. Soulmates aren’t just lovers.”

“Oh.” His brows screw inward, and Penny sighs harshly, the armor of professionalism slipping. It makes Quentin feel more human than he has since he stepped foot in Castle Blackspire over a year ago. He didn’t know he didn’t need a beating heart to still be painfully human. Penny points to Kady, and connected to her wrist is a blood red string of magic Quentin didn’t see before, tangled as it fades behind her into the darkness and fades into nothing. Eliot has the same string fading back into the black. Quentin swallows the lump in his throat; Teddy tied their wrists together in the open field of the mosaic. The love of his lives.

“Their souls are bonded. It doesn’t need to be more than that. I know growing up in the Western Civilization turned your brain into a pile of mush starring Julia Roberts, but man, it’s not always like that. White strings are soulbonds, created by circumstance, not fate.”

Quentin pauses for a long time, and then asks, “I did that?”

Penny smiles, scoffs out a laugh, and shakes his head. “Yeah, man, you did that. Don’t let it go to your head. And besides,” he smirks, nodding up to the screen, “movie’s not over.”

Quentin turns back to see Eliot shift in place and look to his right. “Bambi?”

Margo sighs, eyes terrified and her mouth in a hard line. The Destroyer. Whatever she says next will determine whatever Eliot does going forward, and Quentin selfishly finds himself hoping she doesn’t talk him out of it. There’s just so much he has left to do. So much he has yet to love. The bronze string tightens, pulls sharply like it’s been plucked, then settles as both of them do when she stands up with her hands on her hips and a small smile playing on her mouth.

“I’m gonna level with you two: I know you're gonna endanger yourselves like absolute fucking assholes.” Quentin huffs out a quiet laugh. He misses her, and misses her, and misses her. “But I'll be damned if I lose you, too. Again. Fuck, El, I'm not fucking _losing_ you _again._ But I know when it comes to you and Q, it's better to work with you than against you. I think we all learned that the hard way this year.” She turns to the group and raises a perfectly manicured brow, as if challenging them all to argue. They don’t. Quentin ducks his head, embarrassed despite not even being there. “So if you guys wanna wage some wars, I guess I'll be your godforsaken warden.”

Eliot grins, broad and true, and Quentin doesn't even notice when he mirrors it too, an accident, like breathing. All his old impulses, still intact. His heart, his soul, his Shade, all still his, all screaming with each bray of his undead heart: _alive. alive. alive._

_Find me. I'm here. I'll wait for you. I finally have a reason to survive. I’ve always had a reason to survive. I’m sorry I ever made any of you think you weren’t the entirety of it._

“Kady?” Julia asks, pleads, turning to her with shining eyes. Kady’s tangled fingers unknowingly play with her own red string of fate.

“What the hell?” She says, huffing out a laugh, and clambers to stand with them. Julia allows Quentin's cards to come back to her, doesn't even need to preform a tut to do so with all her newfound power. “I have my own wars to wage underground.” They turn to Alice, and Quentin wishes he could breathe at the look on her face: all rock-hard anger and bone-deep grief.

"He'd do it for me. Shit, he  _did_ do it for me." She chuckles, and Eliot smiles at her. She casts her gaze sideways, and stands up, threading her fingers through Eliot's. Quentin aches all over. "If you guys really think this'll work... then so do I."

“Penny?” Quentin asks, turning to find Penny still watching the screen with a haunted, lovelorn expression. “You’ve read my book, right?”

Penny grimaces, shuts his eyes, and chuckles lightly, like a man who’s seen into the endless future and hates to love what he sees in it. “Yeah…”

Quentin smiles, feels whatever was broken inside of him from both fate and circumstance slowly start to mend again. “So you know that I’m going to ask you how I can help get to them.”

He sighs, world-weary and exhausted. “Fuck, this part isn’t gonna be fun at all.”


	3. William "Penny" Adiyodi, 23rd Timeline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny cuts the strings.

Living with the knowledge that there’s a man all your friends knew with your face, your body, and parts of your personality can be a little bit trippy. For Penny, what makes it easier is knowing that these are only versions of his friends as well.

For example, his Kady and himself barely ever interacted in the 23rd timeline. This Julia is not irrevocably in love with him — that was a big twist, and a heart wrenching one, if you got him drunk enough to admit it. But the biggest change isn’t the women of his life — it was Quentin Coldwater.

His Quentin was hardly even a person anymore prior to his death — he was cold as stone, angry as a storm, wild as a swarm. He was the Beast. He stole everything from Penny Adiyodi of the 23rd timeline.

It wasn’t difficult to see the 40th timeline’s Quentin as an entirely different person than the version of him he knew. The only thing they had in common were the bodies they were housed in. Quentin 40's Shade was hyper-present in his personality, which helped Penny understand why he would want to sever ties with it in the first place. The 40th timeline’s Quentin was anxious as fuck about hurting his friends, constantly on edge with the somber air of someone who’s seen too much and couldn’t help but come out the other side a changed man. Julia talked to him in general terms about her Quentin’s depression _(Q,_ she always says with the ghost of a smile for a ghost of a man, and it makes Penny’s heart ache at all the 40th timeline’s Julia has lost). Penny supposes both the Quentin he knew and the Quentin Julia knew both were depressed — they just dealt with it in entirely opposite ways.

Quentin 40 would — and did — do absolutely anything to save his friends. Quentin 23 did absolutely anything to destroy them. He can’t help but feel a little jealous that all his friends got to know a much better version of the man he knew.

It wasn’t exactly shocking when Quentin died that all his friends went into varying states of grief-ridden shock. Alice threw herself into her work at the Library, and Kady with her work with the baby hedges. Margo, the King of all her timelines, had been isolating in particularly un-Margo fashion, barely leaving Eliot’s side with this emptiness in her eyes that made Penny want to throw things. Eliot himself looked fucking  _gaunt,_ a shell of whoever he was before his possession. He didn’t speak, barely even moved unless Margo was making him; he looked like a walking bruise. And Julia… Fuck, Julia was a _wreck._ Penny could hardly look at the ashen expression she wore at all times; the bruises under her eyes she had no interest in doing the work to magick away; the haunted, vacant look in her eyes that rivaled Margo's.

Penny barely got the chance to know Quentin 40 in any real way, but what he did know was the aftermath.

So when they all came home from Quentin’s wake that Penny was too uncomfortable to attend with a fire under their asses, all Penny can do is breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, the people he jumped worlds for don’t look just as dead as they had when Penny left their graves in timeline 23.

“Penny! Okay, so here’s the deal,” Julia says, eyes bright, grin twin-sharp as Eliot’s who is leaning heavily on his cane from the walk up the stairs. God, Penny’s missed that spark in any Julia’s eyes. “We’re going to bring Quentin back.”

“Okay,” Penny nods, already in agreement. Anything to keep the light in this room alive. “I’ll do what I can to help.” Julia’s smile turns softer at that, fonder, and Penny’s heart _beats_ even if he doesn’t want it to. The smile on any Julia is heart-stopping, even if he knows logically that this Julia isn’t the one he fell in love with. “Love the enthusiasm. Any idea how?”

“Of course,” Eliot scoffs, regal as all fuck, making Penny almost fall to his knees, and then feel annoyed he felt that way at all. “We petition Hades.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Penny asks.

“Because that _won’t_ work,” adds Alice, almost hissing at the ignorance. Eliot’s eyes cut over to her but he stays facing forward.

“Not that I would ever willingly reference _The Godfather,_ but we’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

“And that’s where I’m out,” Alice sighs, closing her eyes and rubbing a hand over her face. She comes away with red scratch marks on her left cheek. “I want Q back as much as any of us, probably more considering _I_ was the one who watched him... but I can’t sacrifice my life for it. He already sacrificed everything so we could have the chance to live with magic. I won’t spit on that gift by ruining my gig with the Library.” 

“The Library is the reason we need to get him back at all,” Julia says, sounding ripped at the seams. “Alice, I love you, and I respect you. If you can’t work with us, that's fine. But we’re going to do it anyway, even if we have to double-cross you to do so. This is the warning you deserve.” Her words come out of her like every word is a struggle, like merely existing is exhausting. Penny wants to help, wants to _fix it,_ but he doesn’t think he knows how. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he shouldn’t; after all, Julia told him herself that she isn’t a fragile, broken thing. Maybe she doesn’t need to be fixed, and Penny just has to accept that.

“Alice, honestly, we could use your help,” says Margo, sounding tired in a way that makes Penny's whole body grow heavy just from hearing. “Trust me, it’s better to work with these fuckers than against them. You’re smart, and you working in the Library gives us the closest tie to Q that we’ve got. We need your help to do this. If you want Q back as much as any of us, you’d work with us to do it. Or at least willingly turn a blind fucking eye.”

“Quentin is worth fighting for,” Julia adds, quiet dignity and grace in every word.

Alice sighs again, looking around at the apartment, to each of the windows, and then down at her heels. She rubs her hands against her charcoal grey slacks and whispers something in what sounds like Yiddish. She goes through the motions a complicated hand tut, and a circle appears on the floor beneath them, covered in glowing gold sigils. They all startle, and between her words, she says in that desperate way she always sounds, no matter the timeline, “Don’t fucking move.”

They don’t.

It takes about 45 seconds for Alice to complete her ritual, but by the time she’s finished, Penny has finally remembered why the spell is easy for her: Alice is a phosphoromancy major, but more than that, she's the best goddamn Magician this world will ever see. There’s a full-length mirror angled towards them on the opposite side of the living room, and the light is bouncing off of it to power the circle. Playing with light has always been Alice’s specialty, and she does it with the kind of grace that makes Penny wonder if she shouldn’t always be casting magic — if she might always be without any of them knowing it. To Alice Quinn, magic is a second skin.

Penny cuts his eyes over to the mirror, and sees an office, and through the open door behind the boring black desk, there is a series of long, seemingly endless grey hallways. The Library of the Neitherlands, he assumes. The image starts to fade from view, and Penny looks back over to Alice who is going widdershins to close… whatever it is she opened. 

She looks back up and opens her eyes, looking directly at Julia as she shifts backwards, away from the the group but still somehow a part of it. “That mirror is now a telephone of sorts to my office at the Library. To power it up, you stand in the spot where I was just standing, go through this tut, and say _efenen di tir._ The mirror on my desk will show a glowing void, as will the mirror here. To answer a call, one just has to say, _akei.”_  

She shows them the tut, and they all repeat the Yiddish. Alice nods, and after she assesses the rest of their form, she looks back to Julia. “I won’t be able to do a lot… but I can do what I can. Push paperwork, whatever. I want to help. I want Q back. But I can’t give up my life for it, so please just… don’t involve me in any of the gory details. I have a lot of liability hanging over my head. I’m not telling you _not_ to do anything shitty, but… Whatever, I just… The phone goes both ways, okay? If you need me, I’m here. And vice versa.”

“Okay,” Julia answers softly, almost smiling. “Thank you, Alice.”

“Hey…” Kady says, softer than she usually is, “Julia, you know I want to help you, but… with all my baby hedges, I’m afraid helping too much would put them in danger. I want to help, of course, I love Q, too… but maybe peripherally?”

“Peripherally,” Alice repeats, not sounding so torn to shreds anymore. “That’s a good word for it.”

“Okay. Sure.” 

Julia looks a bit disappointed, almost betrayed with a bee-stung sadness, so Penny, with all the fire he can muster, declares, “Well, I’m in. All the way in.”

“Me, too,” says Margo without hesitating, looking slightly uncomfortable with the force of all she feels, “obviously. I never do anything halfway.”

“Thank you, Bambi,” Eliot smiles, shifting his weight so he’s leaning even more heavily against her. 

“Just, whatever you do, don’t touch the fucking mirror,” Alice says. Penny smiles; that tactless, fire-spun girl he knew in timeline 23 never lost her vigor. “Mirror World fucking sucks; we all know that well enough.”

“We sure fucking do,” Eliot agrees.

“Okay, I have a night shift at 11, and I still have to get into Manhattan, so…” Alice points at the front door, takes a step back, then two. “Bye.”

And then she’s out the door. “Fantastic,” Margo says, clapping her hands and looking to Eliot. “If you fuckers are finished, mama needs a nap. I’m fucking exhausted. I think we could all use some sleep. Eliot?”

He looks to her, and then shakes his head. “You go. I’m going to stay up, work out the kinks in the plan.”

Margo stares at him, dumbfounded. “You’re serious.”

“I am.” 

“You’ve been up way longer than the doctor would approve of.”

“I have.” They stare at each other for a long time, and seem to have a whole conversation without saying anything at all. Penny tries his hardest to hold back his laughter. He smothers it with a cough.

“Fine. Do what you want. Good night, you goddamn lunatics.” She walks off towards the hallway through the living room where the three bedrooms are. Julia’s been sleeping in Marina’s loft, and Quentin’s old room has been deemed Off Limits for sleeping, so Margo claiming a room means there’s only one left.

“Dibs,” Kady says, and runs off with nothing more. 

Eliot scoffs, and rolls his eyes. “Penny, I’m assuming you have better places to be than helping us.”

“Actually, I…” Penny trails off, looking at Julia biting her nails and staring at the island in the kitchen. There’s a half-eaten bag of Quentin’s favorite chips that no one’s touched. She reaches out and takes one, putting it to her lips. She doesn’t take a bite. “I think I’ll stay up with you guys, if that’s alright. Do what I can to help.”

“Works for me,” Eliot says, sitting beside Julia at the island. He puts a hand gently on the middle of her back, snapping her out of her reverie. “Hey, Julia. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she says, looking as if she’s barely breathing, haunted by a bag of fucking chips. Penny wants to find the whole situation pathetic. He can’t find it within himself to commit to it fully. “I have an idea, but it’s risky.”

“The whole plan is risky,” Eliot says. “Propose the idea anyway.”

“Well, Hades isn’t gonna care if a bunch of random Magicians want one of our own back. He doesn’t care about magic users — why would he? He’s got enough ambient magic inside of him to turn this world to rubble if he wanted.” 

She takes a deep breath, staring at the salt from the chip on her fingers. She dusts it off onto the table, and then places her hands over it. She closes her eyes, and that’s all the salt needs; suddenly, it’s turned to ambient magic. It looks as if it's finally discovered its true purpose as it raises off the counter and glows and then dissipates into the air. She opens her eyes, and looks right at Penny. “But so do I. And so do a bunch of other gods and goddesses. So we petition them, too — by force, if we need to.”

“By force?” Penny asks, brows furrowing.

“She means kidnap a bunch of gods and use them as leverage,” Eliot says, looking right at Julia and never breaking his wonderstruck stare. “I like your style, Wicker.”

“Thanks, Waugh,” she grins, all cheek. “And I think we know someone who might want to help. Actually, Penny, you know her, too.”

“Oh,” Penny says, then sighs. “Well, shit.”

He does know Marina Andrieski. A former associate of the 23rd timeline, a terrifying hedge witch hellbent on destruction with loyalty to herself and a select few who make the cut. Julia tells Penny in another life, she was part of the select few. Now though, neither of them quite know where they stand in this Marina’s book.

Marina is currently shacked up with her girlfriend. Penny manages to find the address to their apartment in his phone, a nice two-story walk-up in Bushwick. Much to his dismay, Margo forces Eliot to stay how and rest because he can't be going up and down the subway stairs easily having just been attacked with an axe three weeks ago. Penny and Julia leave him grumbling about a lack of disabled transportation in New York. Marina opens the door after Penny feigns needing a signature for a package over the intercom. The moment she sees Julia, she rolls her eyes and attempts to slam the door in their faces. Julia doesn’t even have to move a muscle to make sure it doesn’t. Marina peeks out, and assess Julia with a long, shrewd look. She smirks, impressed. “Wow. God-level magic, Julia Wicker? That seems like a story I wanna hear.”

“Hi, Marina,” she says, waving slightly. “I’m a god now. Me and Penny want to talk to you about something.”

Marina crosses her arms and leans her weight on her hip against the doorframe. “So talk.” Through the space between her body and the door, Penny can see a 5-foot-nothing woman with short, wild curls and a smile that could melt iron with its warmth. She waves.

“Hi! Sorry to interrupt, I’m Daisy. You’re friends of Marina’s?”

“Something like that,” Penny grumbles. Still, he can’t help but smile back at her. Actually, it’s not anything he could stop — it’s a compulsion he needs to go through with. Odd. Probably magic-related. Penny doesn’t find he minds too much; more magic should be used to force kindness into the world. “Hi. I’m Penny.”

“Hi, Penny!” She looks to Julia, and waves. “And you are?”

“Julia.” Beside him, Julia doesn’t seem as stiff or unnatural as he feels. Julia might be a powerful enough being to get past whatever magic Daisy is casting, or is possibly just polite. Penny can’t relate. “Nice to meet you, Daisy.”

“Daze, would you mind making us up some of that green tea you’re so fond of?” Marina calls over her shoulder, head lolling on the door to shoot a smile behind her.

“Sure!”

“Thanks babe, you’re a peach.” The moment Daisy leaves their line of sight, Penny relaxes like a puppet with cut strings. What bizarre magic. Marina turns back to Penny and Julia, smile immediately dropping once Daisy is out of the room. “I said talk.”

“I see the charm your girlfriend cast doesn’t extend to your award-winning hospitality,” Julia grins, easy as breathing. Marina rolls her eyes, but smiles back.

“Whatever. I’m giving you 30 seconds and then I’m making Daisy allow me to shut the door.”

“You can do whatever you want with the door, darling! Just be nice about it!” Daisy calls from somewhere inside, presumably the kitchen working on tea.

The only way Penny can tell Marina even heard Daisy is the faint pink tint to her cheeks. “25 seconds.”

“We need your help,” Penny offers.

“I figured,” Marina shoots back. “23 seconds.”

“Marina. We need you,” Julia starts, tremor obvious in her voice. Marina snaps her mouth shut. Her eyes go soft, then harden again the moment she realizes her defenses are down. “We have something we need a few gods' assistance in. Something big.”

“Assistance,” she repeats, smirk still present. “Gods aren’t exactly very forthcoming when it comes to kindness and generosity.”

“I'm well aware.”

“What could you possibly need from a god that you don’t have already? Julia _suddenly_ has all the power she could ever want.” Marina wiggles her perfectly manicured fingers for dramatic effect. She looks Julia up and down once again. Julia squares her shoulders. “And what do you want to do with it?”

“Bring Quentin back.”

Marina stares at her for a long time, and then bursts out laughing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You want to bring back _Quentin Coldwater? That’s_ what you want to do with all your newfound magic? Jesus, that’s rich, wow.”

“Yep. And trust me, you want to, too.”

“Oh, please, do tell me why I would want to bring back the guy who, let me remind you, killed all my friends in my previous timeline.” The smile drops off her face, and her eyes are cold as ice.

“Because you wouldn’t be helping us to bring back Quentin. You’d be doing it for yourself — to get revenge on the god who maimed and murdered you in my timeline. Now _your_ timeline.”

Marina’s eyes flash, and Penny can’t tell if she wants to hurt the gods, or hurt Julia. Either way, he puts a hand to Julia’s shoulder and readies his magic to Travel. Marina looks at him, and rolls his eyes. “Down, boy.” She turns back to Julia. “And how would you suggest I do that?”

“I know exactly where to find him and how to circumvent the stifling magic Our Lady Underground cast to make sure he can't be tracked. I hear kidnapping is all the rage nowadays,” Julia grins, wicked and fierce. Penny suddenly understands what Marina 40 must’ve seen in her, and the stark differences between his Julia and this one. “Plus, you know a lot about god-proofing buildings. We could use that. And so could you.”

“Ah, appealing to my sadistically vengeful sensibilities, well done," Marina sighs dreamily. "I guess I’m in. But I want it on the record that I’m not doing this for Coldwater.”

“Duly noted.” Julia and Marina smile at each other. Penny feels a bit like a third wheel. He doesn’t know why.

“Daze, we officially got company!” Marina yells back, which is apparently Penny and Julia’s cue to come inside, as Marina walks back into the house, leaving the door gaping open in her wake.

“Wonderful! I made enough tea for everyone.” Daisy peeks her head from beyond the hallway. “Well, come on in, guys, you’ll catch your deaths standing out in the cold! Wipe your shoes in the way in, if you don’t mind. I hope you like scones!”

Daisy disappears into the hallway from whence she came. Penny turns to Julia. “They make a very odd couple.”

“I think it’s nice,” Julia says, smiling softly.

Penny smiles back. “I didn’t say it wasn’t.” He ushers her inside. “After you, Our Lady of the Tree.” Julia flushes a delightful pink at the name. Under the influence of Daisy's politeness magic, Penny doesn’t tease her about it. However, that doesn’t stop him from wanting to.

Penny knows now unequivocally, watching the fire in Julia’s eyes as they work out the details of the plan with Marina (and Daisy, who shockingly is fine with Marina kidnapping gods and/or goddesses; she says Marina deserves the chance to go after the people who hurt her, any version of her) that this Julia — Julia of the 40th timeline, Our Lady of the Tree — is not the Julia he knew and loved in the 23rd timeline. And that’s okay.

This Julia has been through hell and back at the hands of multiple gods, and now has enough power to bring them to their knees. Penny hadn’t even known Persephone siphoned her power into Julia until she tells Marina. He thinks perhaps he just missed his own Julia enough to think Julia 40 could replace her. He knows now that kind of thinking is a disservice to this Julia and his own lost love. He smiles at Julia 40, and privately cuts the strings that have been choking his heart for so long. It feels a little dramatic, but he can’t help but breathe a little easier now that he’s finally put his love to rest.


	4. Julia Ogden Wicker, Our Lady of the Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even though she doesn't entirely want to, Julia speaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a while! sorry bout that, but i have the next two chapters completely written because i'm a monster and season five is lighting a raging, furious fire under my ass like you wouldn't believe.

Having a friend who can travel anywhere, anytime has kind of made the train obsolete.

Julia is selfishly glad for this, because taking the train always reminds her of Quentin because Quentin fucking _hated_ the Subway. He could barely function underground without Julia there to help him through the social awkwardness of pushing past people to get onto an overcrowded, stuffy, tiny train car. Julia doesn’t _love_ the Subway either, because who does? But just the scent of hot garbage wafting up through the sewer grates is enough to remind her of Q kvetching over having to go through Manhattan during rush hour.

Fuck, everything it seems is enough to remind her of Quentin.

She swallows, closes her eyes, and tunes back into whatever Marina is going over with Penny 23 and Daisy, her wife who is actually incredibly kind. Stranger things have happened, she supposes. Daisy seems to love her, and Marina definitely loves her back if the reason she’s now in this timeline means anything.

“Okay, here's what we’re gonna do: Penny is going to take…” Marina rips out the piece of paper she's been writing on in her notebook and hands it to Penny between two fingers, “this laundry list, and get everything on it. I wrote contacts’ names for you. Do _not_ say you're coming from me; I will not have you fucking up my working relationships with your allergy to politeness.”

“I'm not—”

“Did I ask you to respond? Go.”

Penny looks down at the list, sighs wearily, and blinks out. Julia reaches for him, thinking she should go with him, but Marina grabs her wrist loosely and drags it back down before she can touch him. She looks to Marina, confused. “He was my ride.”

“It's fine, there's a J train three blocks from here, we can take that to Halsey Street.” Julia just stares, which makes Marina laugh a little unkindly. “You've been experiencing Travelers’ privilege for far too long. The Subway, Julia. We’re taking the Subway.” Marina grabs her book and puts it in a small purse that probably shouldn't be able to fit the leather-bound book. It slips right in. She calls out over her shoulder, “Daze, I'm going out with Julia. I'll be back for dinner.”

“Sounds good, peaches, see you then!”

Julia looks at her, and smirks. “Peaches?”

“Do you _want_ me to help you?” Marina shoots back, drawling in that bored manner that’s signature to Marina Andrieski in any timeline.

“Come on.” 

They walk together to the train in silence, and when they make it there, Julia reaches for her wallet only to find she's taken all her old, expired Metrocards out. She looks around to see if anybody is around, fingers already tutting around the spell to unlock the machine, and there's an MTA agent looking right back at her. She mutters to herself, cursing the NYPD as she sticks her credit card in and Marina laughs, already on the other side of the gate.

But when she goes to buy a card the right way, it comes out covered in rainbows. For a moment, she's afraid it's magic. Afraid Iris or Persephone are still about, sending Julia convoluted and confusing messages from beyond the grave. But then she takes a closer look, and realizes it's just the design on the card. 

 _LOVE IS LOVE_ it boasts on the front. _It's June,_ she realizes with a start, _pride month._ Staring at the abstract shapes on the front makes her a bit nauseous. Suddenly, she's struck with the feeling that Q is standing right beside her.

 _We’ll get you to pride this year, then. This is definitely cause for celebration,_ she told Q when he told her a month or two before his death that he likes men the same manner he likes women. Loved Alice, loved his late wife from another life, loved _Eliot._  It made the desperation he went through to get the Monster out of Eliot make much more sense. _It's Eliot,_ he said with a finality in his voice that Julia didn't recognize, not in Q, but still knew not to argue with. 

The knowledge of Quentin's newfound (or perhaps oldfound if what he told her about the Mosaic meant anything) didn't cause Julia to see him in any new light; it was as if more that the man she'd always known had been fully realized now. She felt honored. Grateful. Riotous, somehow, like she wanted to parade Q through the streets and tell anyone who would listen that he is her best friend. The best part of her life; better even than magic. More real; more tangible. Less likely to disappear on her.

Pride, she thought, still thinks, is the best feeling there is.

He shook his head in response. _Too many people._

_I'll take care of you. When you and Eliot are all settled back into your lives, we’ll go to Pride together._

_I'm not… We don't know if we'll ever really get him back. And I'm not. Not like that. Not all the way, I mean, being bi, it's… am I allowed? To go to Pride?_

Julia remembers treading water, wanting to tell him: if you're allowed, I’m allowed. Instead, she said, _Q,_ in that heartsick way she always would whenever he’d put himself down. _Later,_ she told herself. _I'll tell him later, when everything is easier, and we’ll have this conversation the right way._

Later. Julia scoffs as she looks at the Metrocard with blurry vision. What a shitty, awful word.

She wipes beneath her eyes roughly before turning to swipe the card and then pocket it so she doesn't have to be faced with the kind of pride she feels like she will never have again — not without Q. Standing on the platform, Marina looks at her with worry, opens her mouth to say… something. Eventually, she closes her mouth on any pity or empty platitudes, and turns away after shrugging off her cardigan and offering it to Julia. Julia takes it, inexplicably grateful. She’s glad Penny isn’t here. He would’ve asked her what was wrong, and Julia would’ve had to respond with _everything._ She doesn’t want to talk. She doesn’t want to feel. She’s so tired of feeling.

On the train back to the apartment, Julia tries and fails to not think about Quentin. She starts thinking around him instead. Thinking about her experience with knowing what depression looks like on him, and what he told her about his episodes — that he felt numb to the world. He was suicidal, but too exhausted to ever do anything about it. Julia didn’t understand it then, her will to keep surviving too strong, but now... 

Now.

She follows Marina up the stairs to the apartment in silence. There was more to talk about. More to discuss. But Julia is so fucking _tired._ She sits on the floor while Marina, Margo (who has since woken up), and Eliot discuss something at the kitchen island. She tries sitting on the couch, but it feels like Quentin’s weight is there beside her, the ever-present feeling of _comfortlovehome_ he always brought. Or worse, the Monster, blinking in and out of their world like a ghost who wouldn’t stop haunting them. She looks to Eliot, his hair slicked back with gel, an errant curl falling over his forehead. He looks put-together in the same way TV villains do. She slinks to the floor clutching a pillow that smells blessedly like nothing and tries not to think. 

(The Monster’s hair never looked like Eliot’s, all frizzy without whatever product Eliot used to keep his curls in check. Quentin’s hair was greasy having gone weeks without washing it when he died. There was no body. There is nothing Julia can cling to that doesn’t reek of death and destruction — even herself.)

Her eyes move from Eliot to Marina, but even that was a mistake. Marina is not a reprieve from fear. She looks stunning, beautiful, hair up in a ponytail with a few fly-aways from the humidity; a bead of sweat slides down her neck. Or is it a drop of blood? Suddenly, there’s a handprint there, red and angry, like someone (Reynard, _Reynard is still out there)_ is choking her. Julia startles, goes to say something, to warn Marina, but nothing comes out.

She shakes, shakes, for what feels like an eternity. She goes through the motions, scries with Alice to find where the Gods are hiding out in lieu of Persephone’s murder, holds Margo’s axe in her hands, swings it at Hermes’ stomach when he refuses to comply. By the time her brain comes back online, Eliot is in front of her, holding one of her hands in his and leaning heavily on his cane with the other, telling her to follow his breathing. In for four, out for six. Good. In for five, out for seven.

“Julia, you’re alright, just follow my breath.” He lightly squeezes Julia’s hand for five seconds, just hard enough for her to finally feel something, and then loosens. She didn’t want to feel something. Feeling something means feeling grief because right now, grief is all she knows. 

“I’m fine,” she chokes out, hoarse and stiff.

“Okay,” Eliot says, neither agreeing or disagreeing. Marina is at his shoulder, looking harried and terrified. The handprint is gone — was never there at all. Julia shakes her head, vision going white again, and rips herself from Eliot’s weak grasp. Suddenly, she’s in Quentin’s room. She doesn’t remember how she got there — maybe it’s Persephone’s magic, maybe she ran. She doesn’t care to remember. She buries herself under the blankets in Quentin’s bed, pushes her face into his pillows, and waits for the panic to dissipate.

It doesn’t. Everything smells like Quentin. It almost helps her to breathe the way she should be, in through her nose, out through her mouth, but it’s only because buried in soft-smelling cotton, she can pretend like Q is here with her. There’s nothing to fear. There’s nothing to plan. Everyone who should be is here, and magic is here, and the Monsters are not, and there is peace. Finally peace.

She’s still shaking and taking heaving, gasping breaths, trying desperately to commit Q’s scent to memory when Eliot walks in a few minutes later. She should’ve known Eliot would find her hiding here instead of her room. Both of them seemed to use Quentin as a hiding place when he was alive (and he, seemingly, with them). However uncomfortable it may be at times, through loving Q like they do, she and Eliot know each other too intimately to be ignored now. She almost misses the days when she didn’t care one way or the other about Eliot. Now they’re unconscious mirrors.

“Julia,” Eliot greets with that casual candor he’s so fond of. He limps over to the edge of the bed. “What was that about?”

Julia sighs, burrowing further into the sheets. She’s so surrounded by Quentin’s scent, it’s hard to dissever his life from what she knows to be true about it. “Nothing. It’s fine, really.”

“Sure, okay,” says Eliot. He doesn’t even sound sarcastic, but Julia still knows he’s being so. She rolls her eyes as she flips over towards him, still not emerging from her blanket prison. “Wanna try that again?”

“Don’t patronize me,” she snaps, wanting to sound like anything other than her own broken tenderness. She hates how sensitive she can be at times, hates getting triggered by the smallest of things. She feels like a broken window pane; the slightest breeze from the outside will send a chill down her spine, no matter how hard she tries to patch it up. Julia Wicker, full of holes. She sighs at the silence.

“I— I’m sorry,” Eliot says quietly. She tries to search for pity in his tone, but finds nothing. “I didn’t mean to patronize you. Whenever Q would get bratty, I’d— that— sorry.”

“Okay,” says Julia. She dimly notices the transference of how to end arguments go from herself, to Q, to Eliot, and now back again. Quentin was a dick sometimes, but at least he was good at apologizing about it. She watches Eliot’s shadow move with stilted, teeth-gritting agony onto the bed. Eliot hisses in pain. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Eliot says, light but hoarse with swallowed screams. With time, his injury from Margo’s axes has gotten worse, not better, especially with how he’s been pushing himself. Using the blankets as a shield, Julia puts her hand on his knee and sucks a bit of the pain out, all she can do from a God-given injury, even as a Goddess herself. Eliot lets out a slow, even breath. “God, that never stops being better than every line I’ve ever done. Jesus. Our Lady of the Tree is right. Thanks, Juniper.”

“Of course,” she says, hushed with the kind of reverence she never thought she’d feel for herself. _Juniper._ What a beautiful, wonderful world. What a tragic, ephemeral world. Eliot doesn’t explain himself for the nickname; she doesn’t want him to.

“Okay. Are you interested in telling me _now?”_

“God, you’re such a little shit,” Julia laughs, quiet and muffled into the pillow. She breathes in. _Q, Q, Q._ She breathes out. _Juniper, Juniper, Juniper._ “Fine. But don’t tell anyone.”

“Not even Margo?” Eliot whines. She can just _hear_ the grin on his face.

“Not even Margo.”

“Fi-iiii-ine.”

“Sometimes, in the right light, Marina looks identically to how she did when she died.”

“Oh.” Silence. “I didn’t know you were there when it happened.”

“I was. Well. I found her. Afterwards.”

“Wow. Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Reynard the Fuckface really had no business ever existing at all, huh.”

“Yeah,” she repeats, then sighs and shuffles around a bit so she can peek out at Eliot from over the covers. He’s not looking at her, is instead staring at his fingers in his lap as he picks at them. It looks a bit like catching a king in a vulnerable moment. She frowns, and almost asks him what’s wrong. She doesn’t, but shockingly, she doesn’t need to.

“Can I tell you something?” Eliot asks his hands.

“Sure you can.”

“Sometimes I pretend Q is still… Like, I didn’t see his body. There _was_ no body, from what Alice and Penny say. Sometimes, especially when I’m in here, it’s like…”

“It’s like he never left,” Julia agrees.

“Yeah.” Silence. “At the risk of sounding childish, I really wish he hadn’t.”

“Me, too.”

Quentin’s bedroom is a place frozen outside of time, like it’s somehow been perfectly petrified despite nearly everyone who lives in Marina’s loft now having been inside this room at some point since his death, whether for closure or rumination. His air purifier has been turned off, the window is shut so his wind chimes lay unmoving. Whenever Julia had been in Q’s various bedrooms over the years, there was always a bit of life in it, even if he wasn’t there. He said he liked to have his surroundings be as distracting as possible so he didn’t have to hear himself think. Now, though, there is only silence. Stillness. It feels more unnatural than she could’ve ever imagined it would.

“Eliot?” He hums. “Do you really think this is gonna work? Going to Hades? I mean, kidnapping? It seems so… pointless, right now. Do you really believe we can bring him back?”

“More than anything,” he responds immediately, more fire in his voice than she ever remembers hearing previously.

“Do you think he’d hate me if he knew I don’t?”

Eliot sighs and lays back against the pillows. His spine cracks a bit. Julia doesn’t mention it; depending on his mood, Eliot can misconstrue concern for pity, and she doesn’t want to chance it. “I don’t think Quentin ever hated anything or anyone more than he hated himself, but least of all, Julia, he never hated you for even a second.”

“Really?” Julia asks past the lump in her throat. She clears it. “I mean, I knew that, but.”

“He still dreamt about you at the Mosaic, even when he was old and grey,” Eliot says in lieu of responding to her false bravado. She knows how much Q loved her. She wants to believe in that knowledge, but the more time passes, the harder that becomes. “He loved you so much, Julia. Endlessly so.” She sniffs, wiping her face on Marina’s sweater sleeve. She hopes she won’t mind when it eventually gets returned. “Every year on your birthday, we would throw a party. Teddy loved it, said it was like having two birthdays. We told him stories about you.”

“He…” Julia lets out a quiet sob. “Tell me about him. Tell me about Teddy.”

“His name was Theodore Rupert Coldwater-Waugh,” Eliot says, a storyteller plain in his voice. “He had Arielle’s strawberry blonde hair with a propensity for pin-straightness he got from Quentin, and was an absolute drama queen. He got that from his father. Well, both of his fathers.” She laughs, her tears wetting the sound. “He loved listening to stories, but didn’t enjoy reading so much. Didn’t take to it the way Q tried to insist upon. We made some up for him instead. For years after Arielle died, we told him a bedtime story that got bigger and more grand with each night it progressed. You were in it; you played the part of the Goddess on high. We told Teddy that after Arielle died, she was taken in by your kindness with open arms.”

“He knew about me?” Julia whispers.

“He did.”

Silence again, but this time it doesn’t hurt nearly as bad.

“I love him, and I don’t even know him.”

“I love him, and he never even existed. Talk about a complete mindfuck.” Julia finally sticks her head completely out of her cocoon, and helps Eliot get under the covers with minimal pain.

“And Q? You loved Q, too?” Julia asks once they both settle, because more than she wants to know, she thinks Eliot needs to say it. There’s a long pause as Eliot works his mouth around words that never come out.

“I did,” he admits eventually. “As bitchy and depressing as he could be, I loved him with every fucked up piece of me. I still do. Sometimes, it feels like even if this plan does fail, the feeling will outlive us all.” He chuckles, covering his face with one hand and shutting his eyes. “Loving someone longer than you’ve been alive has its perks, I guess. Makes you timeless. Makes it endless.”

“I think I might know the feeling,” she says, pulling at a thread on Marina’s sweater. Eliot covers her hand with his own.

“Julia, if you ever have the chance to voice the truth between you and another person, I need you to take it.” His voice is immovable steel, but breaks gently against her like waves on the shore. “If loving Q ever taught me anything, it’s that ‘too late’ is relative, and the great equalizer takes no prisoners. Death comes for us all, and doesn’t take the enormity of love into account. So whenever you know you feel it, tell them. I promise you, they need to hear it just as much as you need to say it. Don’t let the feeling die with them.”

Finally, finally, Julia makes eye contact with Eliot. The bruises under his eyes make him look haunted. She knows her own dark circles mirror his. “Eliot, I hate this. I want to love someone without feeling like I’m moving on from Quentin by loving someone that isn’t him.” 

She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to stave off the second wave of tears. Her voice shakes when she continues, “I never even loved him in the same I _way_ I… Loving Q is just different. It always was. It’s like he’s integral to my existence. There’s never been a me without him. I don’t know how to love someone without him being involved. He’s my _family,_ El. Loving him and worrying about him consumed me for years. It wasn’t romantic; he was just everything to me. It feels like don’t know how to love someone else now that he’s… I know it sounds unhealthy. It probably is. But grief itself can never be dealt with in a healthy way, I don’t think.”

“How would he feel?” Eliot asks, a little desperate. “Tell me how Q would respond if he heard this.”

“He’d…” She sighs, wiping her tears. “He’d say that loving people is the only good part about being alive, and that I have to take the chance to do so even if he can’t anymore.”

“For now,” Eliot adds.

Julia nods. “For now.” She gives him a rueful grin, small but real. It feels good; it feels like healing. “Plus, he'd probably spew some CBT shit about co-dependency.”

Eliot levels her with a disbelieving look. “Come on, Jules. Quentin Coldwater is many things, but self-aware has never been one of them.”

She sighs, feeling the weight of the world fall away just a little bit. _Our Lady of the Tree, please help our crops. We had such a dry spell last season and we can’t afford another. Please, Lord, let it rain._ She closes her eyes, and wills the clouds north of Whitespire to rain. It feels good when the voice in her head quiets from relief.

“Juniper,” he says, “I’ve been thinking of removing my Shade.”

“You have?” He nods. “Me too.”

“Really? Even with what happened the last time?”

“Yeah. I just… I already feel so _empty._ It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Not to feel?”

“Maybe,” he hums, but says nothing further. He can probably tell she has more left to say. She doesn’t want to speak, wants to sleep until she can see Quentin again, but she does. 

“I don’t think I ever want to feel the way I did when I burned down the forest in Fillory. Not again. I try to give that version of myself the benefit of the doubt, because what happened to me, it was so evil, so vile, but I need to remember how hard it was to get that piece of myself back. It’s such a permanent fix to this problem, El.”

“But this problem isn’t temporary. We’re always gonna hurt if we don’t get him back. If we try and try and fail all the same, just like we always have. I still feel like a—the—” (the, the, the) “—Monster with all this pain I’m still housing from him, all this power I don’t want even a speck of. I don’t even know what that seed can do, Julia. How do I know what to do with it? How did you know?”

“You just have to feel it,” she says, frowning at him. “I get it. Sometimes I have to stop myself from looking at you and seeing _Brother,_ and then I feel gross, and then I realize that, in a way, the two of us are like brother and sister already. The Monsters didn’t take that from us. We’re still who we are, to each other and to ourselves, without the Monsters.”

Q did tell her with red cheeks and a more-pronounced-than-usual stutter what the hell ‘peaches and plums, motherfucker’ meant, so Eliot is technically her brother-in-law-one-lifetime-removed. She thinks Eliot might like that concept. Maybe a little too much. She resolves to tell him when their hearts feel a little less broken. It feels a bit like the coward’s choice. She watches Eliot’s eyelashes flutter from exhaustion, and wonders if they will ever feel less torn-up.

“We have to deal with Hermes,” she says, but it pains her to say. They _hurt_ Hermes. _She_ hurt Hermes. She’s bone-sore, heart-sore, and fuck, she’s so _tired._ So fucking tired. She just wants to rest.

“We do,” Eliot says, “and we’ll still have him tomorrow. Rest until then, Juniper. You’re allowed to rest.”

“Rest,” she laughs quietly as her eyes slip shut. “What a horrible concept.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Eliot chuckles in agreement as he kisses her forehead and pulls the blanket up over top of them. She realizes distantly that this is the first time she's slept in bed with a man since Q. She never thought, after Reynard, she'd ever be comfortable doing that with anyone else. Perhaps Quentin’s death has tethered her and Eliot in ways they don't even realize themselves. 

It doesn’t hurt as much as it did just a few minutes ago. As they edges of sleep take her over, she realizes she doesn’t hurt at all, not with her Shade already tucked away fast asleep within her.

 

Nightmares still plague Julia. She doesn’t think, at this rate, they’ll ever stop. Reynard still has such a hold on her, and after the violence she saw yesterday, the blood that spilt from Hermes’ gut from a wound she created, Shade and all. He looked just like Marina’s desecrated corpse when he collapsed in a pool of his own blood and Penny traveled them all into the cell she, Alice and Marina God-proofed for this purpose in the basement of the apartment. It’s no wonder she wakes from her dreams gasping for breath, the scent of Q still swirling in her subconscious, and for a moment as she hears Eliot’s insistent voice repeating her name, he sounds just like Quentin.

“Julia. Julia, you're safe. One hand on your chest, feel it rise and fall. Breathe in; breathe out. Good, again — in; and out. Good, so good. You're Julia Wicker and you're safe in Quentin Coldwater’s room with Eliot Waugh. Kady is in the kitchen, and there’s a dog at the foot of the bed. Breathe in, and out. C’mon, in and out.”

Once she's finally reached some sort of calm, she marvels up at him. “How do you do that so well?”

Eliot shrugs. “Spent a whole lifetime in bed with someone who suffered from PTSD and depression. You pick up a handful of tricks.”

“Right,” she smiles, “A bed of thatched straw in the open field of the Mosaic, yeah?”

“I— yeah. How did you know about that?”

Julia smirks, and shrugs coyly. With her mascara all smudged and the bags beneath her eyes prominent, she knows she looks like a mess. She thought Quentin and Marina were the only other people who would ever see her this broken. But then she remembers Eliot coming to coax her out of the self-made prison of her old apartment in Brooklyn after Marina’s false memory spell was erased, and notices how he still doesn't seem to mind — or even notice — her glaring imperfections. He and Q really were — _are_ a perfect match.

“Q’s got loose lips is all.”

“Oh, tell me _everything,”_ Eliot breathes, eyes wide and mischievous.

“Nope!” She sings, climbing out of bed and untangling herself from Eliot’s silk sheets. “The Bro Code was enacted, that shit doesn't just go away, even in the eventuality of semi-permanent death!”

“You little shit!” Eliot laughs, following her out of bed, bouncing all the way despite the violent way his knees crack at the movement. Julia winces, but still smiles. “I _need_ to hear his dirty little secrets, especially if they're about me!”

“Not even a 50 year marriage can survive without a few secrets,” Julia says, throwing a smirk over her shoulder. The secrets _did_ occasionally get pretty dirty. A few, however, made her cry. To think Q had a whole life Julia didn’t live with him, didn’t meet her best friend’s son or be the best man at his wedding — it hurts like a bitch whenever she thinks about it. “And anyway, we don't have time to chat, because I know what the next leg of our mission is.”

“You do?” Eliot grins. “Pray tell.”

“Well,” she smiles, “it’s a good thing Kady’s in the kitchen, because it definitely involves her.”


	5. Marina Andrieski, 23rd Timeline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marina tries trust.

Marina doesn’t love a lot of things, and she loves even fewer people, but one of those scant few is definitely Julia Wicker. Of course, Julia doesn’t know that, because Marina isn’t stupid and she knows that telling Julia about her feelings would be admitting to too much weakness (no matter how much Daisy tries to drill into her that love isn’t weakness, it’s strength, Marina has yet to completely agree).

Daisy, having now met Our Lady of the Tree, won’t stop talking about her, and that’s not helping the feelings resurfacing in her either, unsure if it’s holdover from a life she never lived herself or if it’s something new, something that belongs only to her here and now. Her wife is entirely supportive of Marina’s feelings, because Julia is very cool and Daisy is the least jealous person to ever walk the face of the earth. But being honest is something Marina has a violent allergy to. She has absolutely no interest in it. 

Daisy has her own boyfriend living in Queens, a man so innately kind and understanding that he makes Marina reconsider if all men are truly as boring and worth none of her time as she previously thought. Marina has no interest in dating Joaquin like Daisy is, because the only people Marina would ever consider dating are women, but she likes the look in Joaquin’s eyes when Daisy performs one of her kindness spells. Joaquin isn’t a Magician, but he loves like magic, which is what drew Daisy to him in the first place. 

And now Marina is being drawn to Julia all over again, with how cutthroat she’s acting trying to get the nerd back. But she’s not Shadeless, not even close.

However, in an unfortunate twist, she wants to be.

They tried to petition Hermes’ help, and when he refused (impolitely, which Marina thinks was unnecessary, and she’s the Top Bitch in New York), Julia and Margo kidnapped him and threw him in the cell in the basement of the apartment building Marina gave to them. Marina God-proofed and sound-proofed the basement with hardly any effort.

And now the two of them are in the loft, Margo downstairs with Hermes and Eliot, and Julia is pacing back and forth, back and forth, careful to avoid the mirrors Alice set up in the corner. “That was  _ awful,” _ she says. “That was fucking awful.”

“I didn’t hate it,” Marina smirks. Julia sends her a look, and she shuts her mouth.

“What did Hermes do to deserve that?”

“I dunno, he’s a man, I’m sure we can figure out something.” Julia sighs, dropping down to sit on the couch and shelve her fingers through her hair rhythmically, soothingly. “Speaking of men,” Marina says carefully, already coming up with a plan, “and hear me out, because I know this is a very sore subject, but what if we do this again, but with… Reynard?”

Julia’s breath audibly catches in her throat. “No. Not with you.”

“Julia, come on. If you want the nerd back, I’m your best bet at getting him without Margo’s weird axes, and you know it.” Marina is lying, of course. She plans to kill him the moment she sees him. But Julia doesn’t need to know that. She may love Julia, but Julia is the only person who knows where Reynard is, and Marina has her own wars to wage.

“Shit. Fuck. I can’t… I don’t know if I…”

“You can,” Marina says, and that’s not a lie, not even close. Marina, even without Persephone’s power, was always the strongest motherfucker Marina’s ever known.

“I'm not stupid, you know,” Julia snaps, sighing harshly. “I have a plan of how to get him. Get Kady to arrest him on at least two counts of rape, if not more.  _ Then _ I would hand him over to you. But I know what you want with him, and it has nothing to do with Quentin.”

“So what if you're right? The fucker deserves it after what he put you through. What he put  _ me _ through. He killed my fucking cat, Julia. No one fucks with my familiar without paying for it.”

“Please, Marina,” Julia begs, quiet and sadder than any Julia Wicker should ever have to be, “we need the leverage. And he may deserve to die, but… but I need him to live if I can stay who I am.”

“That’s  _ bullshit,” _ Marina scoffs, huffing in disbelief. “After what he did to you, and to your Marina, this rapist, murderous asshole deserves to burn. I figured you’d finally given up on that Saint Julia martyr guilt trip.”

“It’s not a guilt trip!” Julia exclaims, hoarse with hurt as she jumps to her feet. “It’s about more than just him destroying my timeline’s Marina, and trying to destroy  _ me; _ it’s about power. You know that better than anyone.”

“Oh, I see. So this is all about me not living up to whatever Female Death Bullshit you've made me up to be in your head. Well, guess what, sugar, I'm alive and I'm not gonna be some dirty deity you pray to to get your martyr-rocks off to.”

“Marina! Fuck! That's not it! I just… I need Q back. I don't expect you to understand, but I would do anything for just a piece of him back. Just a fraction of the kid I grew up beside who made me feel safe around men. Who was unlike any guy I've ever known. He's…” Her voice drops out, and Marina is chagrined to admit she leans forward a fraction just to ensure she doesn't miss a word of Julia’s passion. “He's my best friend. I am who I am because of him. I don't even know how to be myself without him around. It's why I want my Shade gone. Without his around, mine just… it  _ aches.” _

When Marina thinks about falling in love with Julia Wicker, she thinks about fire. From all she knows of their lives together in the 40th timeline, and now as a displaced survivor of the 23rd, she stokes the coals of her soul and cools her down all at once — sometimes apparently literally. Thinking that Reynard’s abuse and Quentin’s death have taken enough of her here that it turns her fire to blinding smoke — it breaks Marina’s cold, cold heart.

“Julia, I’ve seen you wear a lot of different masks. I’ve known you as a baby-faced hedge witch desperate for knowledge. I’ve seen you vengeful and spiteful because the nerd—” She cuts herself off with a grimace, and cringes as she continues, causing her physical pain to use his real name: “Because _Quentin_ had hurt you. I’ve seen you freshly traumatized, ready to do anything it took to forget what Reynard did to you. I've seen you Shadeless, and then offer forgiveness to that same horrific creature who hurt you despite the loss of what supposedly allows you to connect. Even without your Shade, you had more of a knack for this shit than I ever will. I’ve seen you as a human, a hedge witch, a Magician, a Goddess, and Julia, I can _promise you,_ you’re not as strong without your Shade. That compassion and empathy that’s so innate to you, while morally repugnant to me… that’s what makes you the perfect person to complete this… _ugh…_ _quest.”_

“But if I was empathetic even without it, doesn’t that prove I don’t need it at all?” Julia asks — no, begs. Fuck, Marina wishes she could give Julia whatever she wants and still be true to who she is.

Marina cringes, “Jewel, you wouldn’t last a second with Hades if you were missing your Shade. Remember, he’s Reynard’s son, and his wife was  _ just _ killed by your hands.”

“It wasn’t  _ me, _ though. I was possessed, fucking violated  _ again _ by yet another God, and I can’t live through the fallout of that all over again, not without Q. I wouldn’t be standing here without him.”

“Nah. Bullshit. I love you, Jules, but you are far stronger on your own than you will ever give yourself credit for.”

“Don't call me Jules— wait. You love me?”

“I mean, yeah,” Marina smiles, brows furrowed in confusion. “I thought that was obvious. I mean, duh. Trust me, honey, I don’t do shit like this for anyone, ever, sometimes even  _ if _ I love them.” Whenever Marina’s put herself out on the line for a girl in the past, her heart’s been in her throat, her pulse thundering with golden adrenaline, even and especially with Daisy. But now, she’s nothing but calm. Julia smiles, big and bright in a way she so rarely ever is in this timeline, and suddenly,  _ honey _ feels a hell of a lot sweeter on her tongue.

“I—” Julia’s throat moves around words she swallows. Marina tries as hard as she can not to feel nervous. “I’ve been so busy trying to get Q back, I’ve hardly had time to feel anything else. Or at least put words to my feelings. The thought of Quentin not knowing something about me is horrifying. I don't know if… I mean, what about Daisy?”

Marina waves a hand dismissively. “Daisy loves you, and she's not the issue here. The issue, Julia, is you, and you know that. Don't deflect.”

“I— fuck. You really think I'm stronger with my Shade?”

“What would I get out of lying about it?”

Julia smiles slightly. “Fair… Marina, I don't think I can ration the energy needed to build a functional, healthy relationship. Even with you.”

Marina tries to ignore the flutter Julia’s amendment causes, but it barely works. She smiles, and is only able at the last second to steer it away from genuine. “Julia, I expected that. You're grieving. I'd never expect you to be ready now. Just know that… whenever you're ready, so am I.”

“Really?” Julia breathes as her eyes widen and she takes a step closer. Marina feels on the precipice of something big. 

“Yeah. Really.”

"Okay.”

“Okay.” They share a smile. “Now what the fuck are we gonna do with the god in the basement?”

“What are we gonna do about  _ Reynard?” _ Julia counters. 

Marina grins, encircling her wrist with her fingers, pressing the pads to Julia’s thundering pulse, and pulls her towards the door. “One thing at a fucking time, sweetheart.”


	6. Former High King Margo Hanson, The Destroyer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margo fights for what's right.

Margo Hanson has not gotten a good night’s sleep in eight solid months — and Eliot seems dedicated to the cause of ruining any future possibility of it.

She understood and actually _supported_ Julia and Eliot bringing Reynard to Margo. That motherfucker brought about the exact type of reign of terror that Margo wants to see ended by Julia Wicker, Goddess of Justice. But Hermes? What the fuck did Hermes ever do to any of them? Just because he wouldn’t help them in their nutso journey to bring Q back from the dead, that means he should get _maimed_ for it? No. Margo is calling bullshit.

“Bringing me Gods broken and bruised was _not_ part of our agreement, Eliot,” she says after pulling him back up to the penthouse to lay into him once she finished going over Hermes’ wounds to make sure he wasn't going to, you know, _die at the hands of Julia and Eliot._ “I didn’t sign up to go all NYPD on their asses. That was Kady’s part in this. I’m just the warden. You _told me_ all I had to be was the warden. I gave you one of my axes for _Reynard_ and Reynard _only._ He was a blind eye deal because frankly, the bitch deserves everything Marina could possibly dish out and more after what he did. But Hermes? Look, I have no issue with maiming Gods, but at least maim the confirmed shitty ones! You're going full Dark Willow here, and it’s really starting to freak me out.”

“No, this is good,” Eliot grins, dark and sharp and — fuck, _monstrous._ “Maybe now you'll stay out of my way, considering you seem hell bent on ruining this. If even one thing goes wrong, one fraction of a hair out of place goes awry from what Alice told us about our books, we lose Quentin _forever._ Don’t you get that? He’s gonna stay dead, and it’ll be my fucking fault because I was an asshole who couldn’t put away his impulsivity for two seconds and tried to kill the Monster at Blackspire. Margo, you know how I felt about him, and I never said shit about it, let him _die_ thinking it was unrequited, and now he’s — Fuck! Fuck.”

Eliot bends in half over his cane, gripping it so hard his hand starts to shake. Margo puts a hand on his back tentatively, but he immediately shrugs her off. “I’m _fine_ so long as this plan works — and it _will_ work, but we all have to do our part. That means shutting your mouth sometimes and doing as Julia and I say.”

“Woah, fuck you!” Margo responds without pausing a second to breathe, to grieve over not only losing one of her best friends, but two. The Eliot she once knew and loved is gone now, but she knows she’s got a shot at bringing him back if she’s careful enough. She has to be able to. Unfortunately, she is far too tired and far too angry to be careful. She adjusts Q’s scorched crown she’s been wearing like a badge of honor. Eliot’s eyes flick up to it and harden. “You don’t get to speak to me like that!”

“Whatever. Julia and I are taking the steps to remove our Shades. Clearly you should think about doing the same considering you’re going soft.”

“You don't mean that,” she says, low and frightened at seeing the Monster in the eyes of her best friend. She never thought she’d ever have to suffer the way she did when Eliot was possessed again, and she’s furious at Eliot for making her grieve for him when he’s standing right in front of her. “Look, El, I get that you’re grieving — we all are. I loved Quentin, too, alright? But that doesn’t give you any right to treat me like the bad guy for trying to keep your death wish in check.”

Eliot studies her for a long time, and then finally scoffs, says, “Margo the Destroyer my _ass,”_ and turns to walk off. 

“Eliot!” She screams, already sprinting after him. “Don’t you dare walk away from me when I’m talking to you! These are _motherfucking Prada,_ bitch, you are _not_ going to make me run in these! Get back here, you good-for-nothing cockroach!” Eliot’s boots continue clip-clopping away until Margo sighs and screams, “I'm on your fucking _side, you idiot!”_ Eliot finally stops, and turns slowly back to Margo, who lets momentum carry her until she’s only a few feet from Eliot, and whispers, heart-torn and terrified, “I’m _always_ on your side.”

His rock-hard glamour crumbles, but his eyes remain made of steel. “You're right. I didn't mean to take all this shit out on you. You know I love you, and hurting you is the last thing I want to do.”

Margo huffs, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes. “You better be glad I’m so forgiving after all you’re making me put up with.” 

He smiles at her, a little wistful. “You know, Willow would've done much better work with a partner in crime. If she couldn't have Tara, Buffy was the world’s best pinch-hitter.” He holds out his hand. “Didn't you say it was better to work with me and not against me, Buffy-Bambi?”

She laughs a little, the nickname alone propelling her forward, and lets their fingers tangle together despite the anger still swelling like the sea inside her. “Baseball references? Maybe you’re the one going soft.”

“Only for you,” grins Eliot, easy as breathing. 

Margo sighs, but keeps her spine straight in case Eliot makes her need to dig out her love-rusted armor once again. “Buffy would’ve rocked the eyepatch like I do, anyway.”

“You’re probably right,” Eliot agrees solemnly, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Eliot, you can’t…” Margo sighs, but she doesn’t let her crown-heavy head fall; she just tips her chin higher in defiance. Eliot can see through the bravado — he always could — but he stays blissfully silent. “I’m the person who wants to help you, El. You can’t bite my head off whenever I say something you don’t like. I’m trying to stay in deference to your grief, but it’s getting harder when you’re treating me like I’m anyone but Margo the fucking Destroyer.”

“I know you are,” Eliot says, which is so much better than _I’m sorry._ Margo smiles, allows her pin-point posture to soften a bit.

“So you were lying? When you said you and Julia are getting rid of your Shades?”

“Oh, no, that’s still true. I meant you’re right about everything else.” 

Margo’s blood runs cold. “Eliot… You _can’t.”_

“Oh, I think I really can.”

“Why? Why the fuck would you do something so colossally stupid?”

He shrugs. “At this point, the thing is just collateral damage.”

“Eliot… Be serious…”

He shrugs again, but it’s a more violent, twitchy movement this time, and the way he’s stopped looking at her informs her to take whatever he says next as the bloody, filthy truth. “Because I… Fuck, Margo, it _hurts._ It hurts too much. I loved him with everything I fucking had, every stupid, fucked-up piece of my soul is tethered to him, every life I’ve ever lived — alternate or otherwise — has been spent falling in love with him. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Being without him… I feel like I’m dying. It’s like I’m going crazy, Margo.” 

Margo’s heart crawls up her throat and gets lodged there; she’d said those same words to Eliot, only he doesn’t remember because it wasn’t really Eliot. She’d said it to her own awful self wearing Eliot’s face because she doesn’t trust herself or anything she could possibly have to tell herself. But she _does_ trust Eliot, and she trusts how awfully she loves him. She isn’t entirely certain the exact same thing isn’t happening right now. His vulnerable, earnest expression of anguish over lost love feels far too unrealistic to not be a mirror.

“Okay. Level with me, El. When you get Q back — and you _will_ get him back — do you want to be able to have that Old Hollywood, windswept romantic reunion I know you’ve been dreaming about?” 

“I haven’t—” 

“Don’t bother denying it, Penny tells me things.” Eliot looks shocked, and maybe a little insulted. “Okay, so I _make_ him tell me things.”

“He did _what?!”_

Okay, so definitely insulted. “Oh, get your thong out of your twat, it wasn’t an invasion of privacy, we all thought you were _dead_ because you’d been locked in Q’s room for four fucking days after you found out, so Penny-23 dreamwalked. More like dream-meandered. It was a public service. A common courtesy, really. And anyway, that’s not the fucking point.” 

Margo sighs, shakes her head, and steels herself. She's so tired. She wants a hot bath. She wants to pop a couple Ambien and sleep for three days. She wants her crown back. Goddammit, she wants her boys back.

She reaches up and palms Eliot’s jaw gently with both hands, and tips his face down so she can see those stupidly beautiful moss-and-whiskey eyes she loves so dearly. Her favorite color. Her favorite man, so broken, all in pieces. She smiles, trying for something resembling comfort. It feels false. She lets it drop; she’s never needed all that hard, glossy armor with Eliot Waugh.

“The _point_ is that I know that when you get Q back, you’re gonna want him to come back to _you,_ not some Shadeless, hollow imitation. Feeling the grief of his loss, it — it fuckin’ sucks. It sucks for all of us, but I know no matter how much we try to convince you not to, you still blame yourself. I know that's compounding everything and making the grief a thousand times worse. I can't imagine. None of us can, not even Julia. 

“But El, when you get him back? Imagine how _good_ it's gonna feel. All this time and effort and energy you've spent, it's gonna pay off. You’ve read _books._ That can’t be for naught.” Eliot cracks a sly smile, and Margo mirrors it before continuing. “You'll get the boy you love back. When I first got you back, when you finally said my name as _you,_ not the Monster, it was… no relief could ever compare, El. It was every high I’ve ever felt all at once. Quentin deserves to hear you say his name with every inch of affection and intimacy and trust you feel for him. The shit that makes the rest of us gag. The shit that makes having a Shade _worth it._ Let him come back to your love. Don't take it from him; don't take it from _yourself._ You've both already lost too much.”

Eliot smiles at her, a little stunned. “I haven't heard you give an epic speech about the power of love. Didn't think you had it in you, Bambi.”

“I've got everything in me, El, and don't act like I don't.” She sighs, grabbing Eliot’s hand not firmly gripping his cane. “So is your fragile male ego good? You're not gonna do something stupid like rip out your Shade so you and Q can have whatever romantic, googly-eyed bionic sex you guys are into, and I can go work on patching up the god you broke?” Eliot nods, snorting loudly. “Great. Asshole.”

“Bitch.”

“Duh.”

Margo heads down to the god-proofed basement, and she can hear Hermes’ bitching and moaning the second she opens the door.

“Oh, you’re back. I can see you took your sweet time getting down here.”

Margo rolls her eyes, grits her teeth, and adjusts Q’s crown. “Yes, I’m back, and I come bearing medical supplies courtesy of Our Lady of the Tree, Goddess-in-Training.”

“You mean the Goddess that _kidnapped me?”_

“I do. I see you’re still smarting from that.”

“I mean… Yes?”

“Well, toughen the fuck up.” Margo does a quick tut and transports herself into Hermes’ cell. Hermes’ jaw snaps shut. “You were rude as fuck when we asked you for a simple favor. Don’t act like this is all on us.”

“Kidnapping is a bit of a reach from rudeness to mortals,” Hermes scoffs, rolling his eyes as Margo threads one of the needles Julia God-proofed.

“Listen, I’m not one to agree with men on anything, but you’re not wrong.” She sighs, tying the thread and going to work on the axe-wound in Hermes’ gut. He hisses through his teeth. “Oh, please. Don’t cock out on me now.”

She smiles quickly up at him, and is surprised to find him smiling back. “You’re not like many mortals I’ve come across, Miss Hanson.”

“Fillory can do that to a person,” she quips, looping the needle through his skin and back, rhythmic, like a dance. It feels good to help someone. She didn’t ever think something like that would feel good for her.

“Right. The crown.”

“That’s not mine,” she snaps, only ever a side-step away from vicious protectiveness. “That’s the man who you decided, what was it, ‘not worth the paper you wipe your ass with’.”

“Perhaps I was a little… harsh.” Hermes winces, probably just for the dramatics of it, but Margo never said she was below dramatics. “You humans grieve more delicately and fiercely than any other creature I’ve come across. It’s like they take a piece of you with them when they go.”

“They do,” Margo says, and leaves it at that. She doesn’t think Hermes deserves to hear any of the wonderfully brave things Quentin Coldwater has done to endear himself to the hearts of so many, least of all, her. _A great way to get the things you want… is to be so miserable… you don’t want them anymore._ How the mighty have fallen since then. How little Quentin changed from the heavy-hearted boy on the stairs of the Physical Kids’ cottage asking her why the system can’t run on love.

There’s a long pause between the next words spoken, and Margo counts it as a blessing that she doesn’t have to force small-talk with a literal god. It’s kind of nice, the whole having-a-purpose thing. She’s missed it since leaving her heart in Fillory.

“You loved him, too,” Hermes says, and it’s not a question, and Margo breathes a sigh of relief that he didn’t phrase it like one. She doesn’t know what she might’ve said if he had.

“Yeah, I did.” She swallows, threads, spins. “I do.”

“Tell me about him, this Quentin.”

“He… He was kind of a pussy.” Hermes snorts, and Margo smiles at the wound. “That’s not a joke. He was weak-willed and allowed himself to be overtaken by flights of fancy on the regular and he wasn’t exactly the smartest kid I know.” She swallows again, and before Hermes can cut in, she continues. “He was also the bravest man I’ll ever know. He died saving magic for everyone on Earth. He threw himself at love like it wasn’t the stupidest, bravest thing he could do. He loved so fucking endlessly, it was a little disgusting. And… and inspiring.”

Hermes hums disdainfully. Margo pulls the thread too tightly at his judgmental tone, and it snaps. As easily as reaching for a hair tie, she does a minor mending to help the thread remember what it was. Tears well up in her eyes, and she looks down, feels Q’s crown weighing heavily on her head, then squeezes her eyes shut to stave off the tears. She doesn’t remember the last time she cried in front of someone, and she has no interest in doing it in front of this God she barely knows.

“He was a total dweeb, but…” She clears her throat, feeling it constrict as her voice goes hoarse with unshed tears. “But underneath all the nerdiness, he loved people with all his stupid, giant heart. Loved _magic_ with all his stupid, giant heart. Looking back, I… I don’t even know how he fit all that love inside him.”

Hermes says nothing as Margo ties the knot at the end of the stitch and nods down at it. “All cleaned up.”

“Thank you, Miss Hanson,” Hermes says, helping her to her feet.

“Whatever, couldn’t have you bleeding out in the basement. I don’t think I’d ever get out the stains.”

He smiles placatingly at her, as if he already knows all the gruff and bluster is a mask. It unnerves her.

“I’d like to offer you a favor, Miss Hanson.”

She eyes him critically. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” She glares at him, waiting for the ‘but’. It never comes. “I can’t bring back your friend, that’s not my domain, but I can try to perform some other minor miracle you may desire.”

“Fine. If there really is no catch, I… I’d like Eliot Waugh’s bones to be made of gold. You can do that, right? So he isn’t hurting anymore.”

“Oh,” Hermes says, brows screwing in.

“What?”

“No, nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve simply never met anyone who used their favor solely to help someone else. Not even a God.” He smiles down at her. “Maybe mortals aren’t such a waste of space as I once may have thought.”

“Eliot is a good man,” she says, shrugging, trying very hard to keep her voice even. “He deserves it.”

“Honestly, Miss Hanson, I think that says more about you than it does about him.” He smiles, and bows slightly. “Your wish is my command. Perhaps I’ve been wrong about humans after all.”

She smiles saccharinely, and kicks his legs out from under him. It feels good when he goes clattering to the floor. Still Margo, still the Destroyer, no matter what, no matter where. Even with the love of her stupid life on a whole other planet, she still feels just as every bit of herself when she says, “Perhaps you have.”

It feels good to know that Fen would've smiled at that. Even with her light years and timelines away, Margo still feels that same ache for her she has for years now. She wonders if that'll ever go away. She wonders if she wants it to. She wonders, really and truly wonders, if it even matters at all. 

This must be how lovesick Eliot and his Fool feel. Pathetic. Disgusting. Fucking _wonderful._  

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me about my favorite traumatized angry magicians. here's [other places you can find me](http://rebecca.carrd.co) to do so.


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